Furry Friends: Super Furry Animals won’t stop smiling

All I know’s they’re Welsh and not John Cale. Half-past two on Saturday afternoon, two members of Super Furry Animals sneak in the back of Stop Smiling magazine’s Milwaukee Avenue HQ for a small secret show on a rare bright sunny afternoon. The Rolling Stones, they did it once at Double Door, and that’s a legend; this is more like what guitarist Gruff Rhys calls “bitin’ into my breakfast buffet.”
The thin white light of day glances around the storefront and seventy or so invitees’ faces. “Sorry for keepin’ ya, we’ll be just two minutes, yeh? I’m in the process of timing me guitar, which just came from where we were last night. Minneapolis, where’s it’s bloody cold.” He twangs, other guy asks, “How many soundmen does it take to screw in a light bulb? Two. One… Two.”

“We’re just wakin’ up, maybe soon we’ll be bouncing off the wall.” They’re “militant” about not playing anything from their Metro set-list—”Maybe we’ll just leave,” Rhys deadpans. It’s mellow, but for the man in orange Gore-Tex shouting love for “Ohio Heat!” It’s charming, when the view’s blocked by iPhones held high for photos. (The ratio of people to viewfinders runs about two-to-one.) The attenuated ugggg of fifty-six buses in weekend traffic rises above the shambling bemusement, with the dazed affability of a hung-over soundcheck.

It’s “kind of on the brink of pastiche… as we continue our hour of downer songs. Tonight we won’t be talking so much.” (Ray Pride)